Today we’d like to introduce you to Maya Pittman.
Hi Maya, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstories with our readers?
Born and raised in Raleigh, NC, my Southeast Raleigh high school psychology class revealed the connection between who I am and who I was destined to be and serve professionally. Always a listener. Always a lover of people. I wanted to enter the world of the human mind and help others navigate their lives in the process. During my junior year of high school, my phenomenal mother passed away, and my life took a drastic turn towards that which was my purpose. After attending therapy during my senior year, I realized that I too wanted to be a guiding light for others and their inevitable, often unpredictable life changes and challenges. I attended UNC-Chapel Hill as a psychology major, realizing I was not a fan of research, I sought and found clinical mental health counseling. Counseling’s direct person-to-person contact stood out and became my lane. I went on to earn my Master’s degree in Washington, DC at The George Washington University and officially started my counseling journey through internships that served urban communities in an array of different areas (anxiety, depression, grief, and loss, identify issues, relationship, etc). The experiences were eye-opening to the deeper importance of counseling in the lives of others, as I recognized how it created a turning point towards mental wellness that would persist for the rest of people’s lives. After relocating back to North Carolina to work towards my full licensure, I spent the last seven years serving as a generalist counselor (addressing an incredibly wide range of presenting concerns) at East Carolina University in addition to coordinator of outreach and intercultural affairs. When one develops professionally, there comes a moment where they can begin to create the vision of their personal life and how their professional life compliments this. My vision of personal freedom and the ability to hold more space and time for family and other values led me to creating Amethyst Counseling Services, PLLC during my time in University Counseling. In 2019 I launched my fully digital, online counseling practice that served as a complement to the freedom and flexibility I would like to create in my life. Naturally my clientele displayed this same desire for freedom and flexibility which aligned with Amethyst’s offering of nontraditional, online counseling. One of my closest friends and fellow Raleigh native, Gregory Pate soon joined the practice as a clinician able to serve DC, MD, and VA. When the pandemic impacted our lives in ways that have forever changed us all, it also swept through the counseling world like a crushing wave. Thankfully, Amethyst Counseling was in place and ready to serve our clients as their day-to-day went remote, and the rest is history!
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle-free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
I believe that our challenges are often as big as the blessings that arrive in our lives. While creating Amethyst Counseling has been fairly smooth for the most part, the struggle is contained in taking the leaps necessary to create the life that I would like to live alongside of Amethyst Counseling. For example, there came I time when I knew I would have to expand beyond the few evening hours I had available after my 9-5 workday in order to truly grow and nourish my practice. In order to create the flexible life I wanted a drastic change had to be made. . I had to become vulnerable in more deeply sharing my gifts or speaking and sharing to create opportunities, and reframe the mental block that suggests every responsible adult has to remain in a 9-5 job for 30 plus years until the retire. And only THEN, can they live life on their own terms. Identifying a date, creating an exit strategy, and preparing to leave my first “big girl” job on the tail-end of being a brand-new mom was a constant ride of self-doubt, positive self-talk, acceptance of support, and present mindedness needed to sustain the process of moving one step at a time. Trusting the process allowed me to reach my ultimate goal of transitioning Amethyst Counseling Services into a full time, digital private mental health practice. My biggest struggle was moving past myself, over and over again.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Amethyst Counseling Services, PLLC?
Amethyst Counseling Services, PLLC is a fully digital private mental health practice providing the treatment and support needed to work towards your areas of desired change. Through psychotherapy, psycho-education and outreach Amethyst aims to help our clients reestablish the relationship they hold with themselves, and with difficult life experiences and mental health concerns.
We are known for our forward-thinking and relatable clinicians who value the therapeutic relationship as an entity of efficient counseling work. Through a HIPPA compliant, telehealth/online counseling portal, our practice specializes in utilizing integrative counseling approaches with a foundation of mindfulness which aims to help our clients identify the tools needed to become their ideal selves while creating their ideal world.
I am most proud of how passionate and invested the clinicians (myself and my partner and friend) are in the work of counseling. While we have the ability to operate in a one-on-one individual counseling setting, we have also shared our thoughts and information which we refer to as “gems” to larger audiences and public speaking platforms, and social media.
What do you like best about our city? What do you like least?
I was born and raised in Raleigh, NC and I continue to love the progressive, forward-thinking, and collaborative side of our city. I can’t say there is anything I like “least” about our city. However, like many other places, it still faces a larger national issue of meeting the need for increased access to mental health care for underserved populations in particular. While counseling and therapy are inching towards center stage, there is still a lot of work to be done.
Pricing:
- Private pay no insurance (provide reimbursement)
- $125.00 per individual session
- Free phone consultation
Contact Info:
- Email: [email protected]
- Website: www.weareamethyst.com
- Instagram: @AmethystCounseling @Themindfulmaya
